The Religion of the Ancient Celts eBook

he could be slain. This may explain Pliny’s
account of the mistletoe rite. The mistletoe or
branch was the soul of the tree, and also contained
the life of the divine representative. It must
be plucked before the tree could be cut down or the
victim slain. Hypothetical as this may be, Pliny’s
account is incomplete, or he is relating something
of which all the details were not known to him.
The rite must have had some other purpose than that
of the magico-medical use of the mistletoe which he
describes, and though he says nothing of cutting down
the tree or slaying a human victim, it is not unlikely
that, as human sacrifice had been prohibited in his
time, the oxen which were slain during the rite took
the place of the latter. Later romantic tales
suggest that, before slaying some personage, the mythico-romantic
survivor of a divine priest or king, a branch carried
by him had to be captured by his assailant, or plucked
from the tree which he defended.[530] These may point
to an old belief in tree and king as divine representatives,
and to a ritual like that associated with the Priest
of Nemi. The divine tree became the mystic tree
of Elysium, with gold and silver branches and marvellous
fruits. Armed with such a branch, the gift of
one of its people, mortals might penetrate unhindered
to the divine land. Perhaps they may be regarded
as romantic forms of the old divine kings with the
branch of the divine tree.

If in early times the spirit of vegetation was feminine,
her representative would be a woman, probably slain
at recurring festivals by the female worshippers.
This would explain the slaying of one of their number
at a festival by Namnite women. But when male
spirits or gods superseded goddesses, the divine priest-king
would take the place of the female representative.
On the other hand, just as the goddess became the
consort of the god, a female representative would continue
as the divine bride in the ritual of the sacred marriage,
the May Queen of later folk-custom. Sporadically,
too, conservatism would retain female cults with female
divine incarnations, as is seen by the presence of
the May Queen alone in certain folk-survivals, and
by many Celtic rituals from which men were excluded.[531]

FOOTNOTES:

[516] O’Grady, ii. 228.

[517] Ibid. ii. 203. Cf. Caesar, vi. 14,
“the immortal gods” of Gaul.

[518] Cf. Ch. XXIV.; O’Grady, ii.
110, 172; Nutt-Meyer, i. 42.

[519] Leahy, ii. 6.

[520] IT iii. 203; Trip. Life,
507; Annals of the Four Masters, A.D. 14; RC
xxii. 28, 168. Chiefs as well as kings probably
influenced fertility. A curious survival of this
is found in the belief that herrings abounded in Dunvegan
Loch when MacLeod arrived at his castle there, and
in the desire of the people in Skye during the potato
famine that his fairy banner should be waved.

[521] An echo of this may underlie the words attributed
to King Ailill, “If I am slain, it will be the
redemption of many” (O’Grady, ii. 416).